SEO or PPC?
SEO or PPC?
Digital marketing is all about reaching your target audience and sending them to a final sales point. In most cases, businesses want to increase traffic to their website and use this platform to sell their services or products.
The two main strategies for increasing website traffic and funnelling users are Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Below we will discuss the benefits to these two digital marketing solutions and the potential hurdles you may face when using them.
What is SEO?
SEO is the technique of optimising, altering and updating your website in order to rank higher for your target keywords and to increase the organic traffic your website receives. These alterations can be as simple as changing the structure of your website’s design or adding new content like blog posts and landing pages that target specific search terms.
Why choose SEO?
1. It is cost efficient
Search engine optimisation doesn’t require a budget for advertisements. SEO can be done effectively and stay within your digital marketing budget.
2. SEO can improve user experience
SEO focuses on producing content that is relevant and high quality. This will create a better experience across your website.
3. Provides long-term benefits
Search engine optimisation can produce results for your website that can last for months or years for targeted keywords and search terms. This is particularly beneficial to evergreen content.
Drawbacks of SEO
1. It can be a slow burn
Significant results can be achieved with SEO, but long term benefits sometimes mean long term strategies.
2. Search engines can change their algorithms
SEO strategies and techniques will have to be monitored regularly as search engines like Google can change the way their algorithms work.
What is PPC Advertising?
Pay Per Click is a type of advertising where businesses pay every time a user clicks on their advertisement. Depending on your advertising budget, PPC ads can appear at the top of SERPs (search engine results pages). These ads are usually labeled so that users can see they are sponsored or paid ads.
Why choose PPC?
1. Can provide results faster
Within days or just hours, PPC can start to push traffic to your website. Using popular keywords will generate more traffic than those that are more specific.
2. PPC is targeted advertising
With SEO you can target keywords, whereas with PPC you can target users by keywords, location and demographic. This allows business to target an extremely specific audience.
3. Detailed statistics and analytics
When advertising with a PPC strategy you can make decisions based on very detailed analytics. This can help you change your strategy quickly and easily to make your PPC campaign even more effective.
Drawbacks of PPC
1. It can be fairly expensive
If you set up your PPC campaign with a high daily budget, costs can add up quickly, especially when you target competitive keywords.
2. Ad Blocker Software
While users become more internet savvy, some may resort to using ad blockers in order to automatically hide any advertisements they come across online. Although this can change the effectiveness of your PPC ads, costs won’t increase to counteract this drawback.
SEO and PPC can work together:
Both SEO and PPC can generate incredible results, so why not use them together?
1. Testing keywords
One way PPC and SEO can be used together is by using PPC to test out how effective your target keywords perform. This will allow businesses to identify which search terms generate the best results, and implement them in their SEO strategy.
2. Starting your marketing campaign
PPC can produce almost instant results, whereas SEO can take some time to generate the same amount of leads. If both strategies are implemented at the same time, PPC can ensure businesses get results from the very start of their marketing campaign. This provides time for your SEO strategy to reach a level of effectiveness you’re happy with.
3. Enhanced customer journey
PPC can target users that are searching for fairly generic keywords, increasing the amount of traffic your website receives. On-page SEO strategies can then be used to alter specific web pages in order to funnel the traffic PPC produces towards more targeted content. This can be achieved by changing your website’s overall design, the language those web pages use, and adding effective call-to-actions.
Find your ideal digital marketing solution
Are you looking to increase your web traffic or find your most effective digital marketing strategy? Find out more about our Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimisation services below!
Written by Denham Thompson
Web Developer & SEO Specialist
Denham maintains and updates our current clients’ websites, as well as designing and developing brand new professional sites for new clients and their businesses. He has 8 years experience working with clients in varying industries and loves applying his knowledge to help our clients succeed.
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